1 in 25 Sentenced to Death in the U.S. are Innocent, Study Claims

Link

This is an old article from April of last year that I believe got overlooked. Well worth posting if you ask me. What if you were on that table?

Since 1973, 144 people on death row have been exonerated. As a percentage of all death sentences, that's just 1.6 percent. But if the innocence rate is 4.1 percent, more than twice the rate of exoneration, the study suggests what most people assumed but dreaded: An untold number of innocent people have been executed. Further, the majority of those wrongfully sentenced to death are likely to languish in prison and never be freed.

The number is now at 150, with the last happening on December 9, 2014. Here's the sad part...

The Innocent List

- Average number of years between being sentenced to death and exoneration: 11.2 years

- Number of cases in which DNA played a substantial factor in establishing innocence: 20

Eleven years is way to long and I couldn't image the feeling of wasting away as an innocent man. Unfortunately, justice doesn't always come swift. The longest time served before the charges were dismissed was 39 years. If it wasn't for advancements in testing and analysys, they might have never gotten out.


There are currently thirty two states that still allow the death penalty as a form of punishment and I hope they all took a hard look at this. It is terrible for a person to suffer a punishment that does not fit the crime and absolutely inexcusable to put an innocent human to death.

The authors believe that 4.1 percent is the lower bound of the wrongful conviction rate for death sentences, because even the special attention given to people on death row will not catch every wrongful conviction. Many of these people have had their sentences reduced, meaning they are "not executed but also not found," as Dieter put it.

The irony here is that you have a greater chance of being acquitted while waiting to die. Death row cases required extreme scrutiny and numerous appeals in order to find flaws in the conviction. Once an inmate gets their sentenced reduced to life in prison, the case takes a back seat unless some groundbreaking piece of evidence presents itself.


It's not easy being questioned by the man. Lots of people act suspicious or nervous when being questioned by authorities simply because of the atmosphere, tension and the techniques they use to play with your mind. An overzealous officer might misread certain expressions and create something out of nothing. If you know in your heart that you are innocent, don't let them convince you otherwise. After they get inside your head you may end up admitting to something that you had no control over.


Especially when you're innocent.

I'm sure this has been asked before, but do you support the death penalty and why? Is there any form of acceptable compensation we cn give a person upon release? Is 100% accuracy even achievable when sentencing someone to death? I'm not very confident the way our justice system works. Time for an overhaul.

We do not have a justice system, we have Rule Of Law.

Our system is one based on punishment, that is, revenge!

It is vengeful society.

The whole system is adversarial where all of the lawyers on both both sides want to 'win'

And the truth be damned.

Now of course, there is $$$ in the prison system, there are kickbacks and all sorts of the rich get richer and the rest of us go to prison.

The Police get to shoot people just because they feel like it.

Is there something wrong in America? Yes there is.

Is there justice .... nope, justice has left the building!

P

a reply to: eisegesis

We must kill people to show that killing people is wrong.

It's the only way.

(state sanctioned, of course)

ETA: If a few innocents happen to get in the way (either through bad luck or intentionally being cast as the guilty to satisfy our sadistic and blood thirsty, vengeful society, so be it).

a reply to: pheonix358

As long as there are enough dead bodies to sweep all the corruption under, nobody bats an eye. America is no peach, but when the right people are in position, the system has the potential to work. It always goes back to not correctly following a system that is already in place.

originally posted by: eisegesis
a reply to: pheonix358

As long as there are enough dead bodies to sweep all the corruption under, nobody bats an eye. America is no peach, but when the right people are in position, the system has the potential to work. It always goes back to not correctly following a system that is already in place.

WTF, no flag not even a star for an OP that is as plain as the nose on your face, although I disagree about any system that requires taking a life, and certainly not by a courtroom.

a reply to: eisegesis

but when the right people are in position, the system has the potential to work. It always goes back to not correctly following a system that is already in place.

I cannot agree.

The basis for the system is one of vengeance and winning.

At its very core, it is not about the truth, it is about the system.

The system serves itself.

Where is the justice in throwing someone in a prison for smoking grass, yet it has been this way for decades.

You have to take the system as a whole. It is more about collecting revenue and making profits.

P

a reply to: eisegesis

If the Justice system wasn't as corrupt as our government I would whole heartedly support the death penalty!

Unfortunately, many of us still have faith in the corrupt system that would rather see an innocent man/woman put to death because their future career in politics is more important than justice!

We vote for them, so why the horror?

a reply to: pheonix358

I would agree that putting someone in prison for grass is not the system doing what it was meant to do.

I would try and separate the argument between petty crimes to murder, extortion, human trafficking. Can justice be called something other than vengeance? How do they get dealt with? Does locking them up for a while fit the crime?

We live in a society motivated by greed...



...and ruled by fear!



And in court if you don't have the big bucks, you will not have a winning defense!

a reply to: eisegesis

How could we possibly trust the state with this power?

Even in the cases where death is simply demanded, it should be handled by the victim or their surviving kin.

a reply to: eisegesis


oh yuck! I don't understand this law! who are we to judge this way I label it as playing god. send them to life. when they ask for rope or razor blade give it to them. can you imagine being the judge who orders death sentence? yuck!

listverse.com...

scroll to number one this story makes me sick

so true where is the justice in a guy smoking weed gets 5 years and a rapist 2years

a reply to: eisegesis

When there is an exoneration from a death sentence that does not always mean the person is not guilty of the crime either though. I understand some are or were though. Even the case in the article someone linked to from listverse indicates that the person involved DID commit a crime...had he not committed a crime (at the same location) he would not have been implicated in the more serious crime.

People are usually very reluctant to impose a death sentence to begin with.

Its my guess that its 1 in 10 that wrongly get convicted of a felony and do time in the US.

When you get convected of a felony you do not get all the cases numerous appeals and extreme scrutiny in order to find flaws in the conviction.
And in many cases you do not even allowed appeals after 1 year.

Cops do set people up just because the cops do not like them or because the cops think the people are criminal that they can not catch in the act or that the people are lucky and always get away with there crimes.

When i worked as a federal security officer we had military personal arrested for crimes they could not have comitted because they were on duty on the base at the time doing training and the base JAG officers had to go to court to try to clear the personal.

a reply to: eisegesis

As an attorney, one of the good guys, its always been my premise that a death sentence should require an elevated burden of proof. Simply, as it stands the more serious an action and its possible subsequent penalty, the higher the burden of proof becomes. So, the prosecution in a low level civil trial only has to prove that the defendant is "more likely guilty than not," and if proven, the guy just pays some money. As the defendant's alleged action becomes more damaging (criminal litigation), so too does the possible subsequent penalty (prison sentence). Therefore, we balance this potentially harsher sentence by requiring the prosecution to jump through a higher hoop and prove that the defendant's guilt is proven "beyond a reasonable doubt."

As it stands proving something "beyond a reasonable doubt" is the highest burden. My idea is to modernize the system and promote equitable justice by adding another elevated burden of proof for death penalty cases. So if a prosecutor sought death, he would have to prove that the defendant's guilt was proven "as to leave not one iota of doubt." An elevated burden of proof in death penalty cases would allow the courts to better modernize and adopt to advancements like video and dna and to better promote equitable justice.

Ive actually been wanting to write a law review article on this topic for some time.

a reply to: Liquesence

1 in 25 die from death row, but we'll go to war over a few "Christians".

Nothing against them of course. Its insane to think we murder our own people everyday in some form or another, but move at the drop of a pin when a person of interest gets murdered overseas. Our foreign policy requires that we send men to their deaths so I guess there's no difference.

the historically proven possibility of executing innocent prisoners renders execution itself an anachronistic failure.

to me, any society that still puts its prisoners to death is still some way from becoming an advanced one.

a reply to: RoScoLaz4

The historically proven possibility of executing innocent prisoners renders execution itself an anachronistic failure.

I couldn't agree more. One innocent person executed is one too many. This should have at least made us rethink how the process is handled. They're excuse was that the data was hard to put into numbers. What that really means is they have been avoiding to take a closer look.

Must be all that paperwork.

a reply to: eisegesis

this is not USA but how efed up. my friend is a flight attendant for Qatar. her friends story: a girl gets proposed to by young fellow. the girls fly home to pick up a wedding dress the boy stays partying in that country. cops arrest him for having weed. the girls return and the guy is nowhere. the about to become bride calls around to find out her new fiancé was executed.in less then three days he was gone forever.

I find these responses hilarious. Let's just close the prisons and let all the murderers and pedophiles out. I'm sure they have learned their lesson and will be a nice productive harmless member of society.

Or maybe not: Three out of Four prisoners re-arrested before five years

Recidivism... look it up.

a reply to: jjkenobi

I'm hoping Phoenix comes by and answers my question because I've been wondering the same thing. It's easy to say "abolish the system" or "do away with our justice system", but that doesn't really lay out a plan to deal with those you've mentioned. I actually would like to hear what he has to say because I value his opinion.